Filling The Gap
by MMB
Summary: Dealing with loss


Title - Filling The Gap  
Author - MMB  
Rating - PG  
Category - V, A  
Spoilers - heavy spoilers for "Island of the Haunted". If you haven't seen it  
yet, you may want to wait with this one...  
Timeline - several weeks after the events of "Island of the Haunted"  
Keywords - MPSF  
Summary - Dealing with loss.  
Disclaimer - They aren't mine, I'm just borrowing them for a bit. Please don't   
kill me...  
  
  
  
It was one of the few pictures that she had of them together, one of the very rare pictures she had that included him at all. Miss Parker smoothed her hand lovingly across the glass that protected the photo of herself with the man whom she had loved as "Daddy" for her entire life. Even now, knowing the futility of the emotional investment she had made in trying to please him for all these years, his never having freely given her the unconditional love of a father in return still hurt.  
  
She sighed and put the picture back on her mantle, not far from her favorite picture of herself as a child with her mother. While she and Da... Mr. Parker... had never been all that close in the last few years, his apparent suicide jump from the plane after protesting his love for her had left a gaping hole in her world that had yet to heal. In the weeks since the subsequent plane crash and her subdued return to the Centre with Lyle and Mr. Raines, Miss Parker had come to realize just how much of her dedication to her job had been nothing but an effort to win her father's... Mr. Parker's... approval and respect.  
  
And now, since she couldn't respect Mr. Raines - even knowing that the chances were very good that he actually WAS her biological father - she had nobody in her life she could think of onto whom to transfer that emotional investment. There was nobody she could think of who would appreciate any efforts she might make, much less someone for whom she'd willingly make an effort in the first place. Besides, she was running desperately short on family members. She couldn't care less about what Lyle thought of her; actually, she'd just as soon not think about what Lyle thought of her. Ethan was with his and Jarod's father and out of the picture, and her baby brother didn't really count when it came to people to impress. And Mr. Raines - no. Her mind refused to go there at all.  
  
Miss Parker stared into the empty glass in her hand, and sighed again as she set the glass on the mantle between the two pictures. Drinking didn't impress anybody, and for the first time she found herself regretting that first neat drink and each one that had followed. She could just hear Sydney's gently accented and disapproving voice reminding her that she had an ulcer that didn't tolerate alcohol. Even more disturbing was that she could imagine the ridicule that would be in Jarod's voice as he mocked her deliberate lack of companionship during the holidays this year and her solitary vigil to midnight on this night. Most disquieting of all to her was her perverse wish that the pesky escapee lab-rat WOULD call, if for no other reason than to reassure her that somebody out there was actually aware that she was alive.  
  
Here it was, New Year's Eve, and she was home alone to celebrate what could only promise to be an even lonelier year than she'd ever had in her life. For the first time in her life, she felt utterly alone - abandoned, without even Daddy's cancelled arrangements to acknowledge her existence. She had nowhere else to go, nobody else to be with except her memories of all the people in her life whom she had loved and lost. Even her mother's voice inside her had been unusually quiet of late. She felt a truly black depression begin to slither into her mind and overlay it with a thick, oily despair; and for the life of her, she had neither incentive nor energy to battle the sense of abandonment and emptiness within and without. What was the use, after all?  
  
Even the thrill of the hunt for Jarod had palled - the time she had spent with him on the isle of Carthis had shattered her ability to keep him pegged as nothing but a nemesis in her mind. She'd secretly cheered when he'd managed to escape only moments after crashing-landing the plane, saving them all. She had no intention of catching him for that ghoul, Raines, to torment further; and without catching Jarod so she could try one last time to trade his freedom for hers, she was condemned to be as much a prisoner of the Centre as he had ever been. This left her with but one option.   
  
She picked up both pictures from the mantle, carried them over to the coffee table and set them down carefully next to each other. Then, as if half-asleep, she moved to the hall closet and reached beneath the pillow and retrieved first her Smith & Wesson and then its clip of ammo, carrying them with both hands over to the couch. She seated herself, then unbuckled the holster, drew out the weapon and stared at it as if fascinated for the first time by its shiny chrome. It was a cold yet loyal companion, she decided as she slid the clip into the handle of the gun and chambered a round with grim determination. She looked at the clock on the mantle. Eleven o'clock - only an hour to go before the year that had seen her discover and then lose a half-brother and then find out her father wasn't her father would be nothing but history and bad memories. Midnight seemed a good hour to end it all.  
  
I'll ring the New Year in with a bang, she thought to herself in a fit of graveyard humor that even she didn't laugh at.  
  
Somehow it wasn't all that surprising that it was coming down to this in the end. Suicide or murder, real or otherwise, seemed to be the Parker family trademark. On Carthis she had learned of the mass murder her grandfather had committed a century earlier when he'd murdered his wife and children and burned their home to the ground. Then she had a mother and twin brother who had both faked a suicide to escape something unlivable in their lives at one point in time, and then her mother had been murdered in cold blood by the man she now knew was probably her biological father. And now a father/uncle had parachuted into the middle of an ocean with some mysterious scrolls in his arms in order to 'put things right again'. Fitting, she thought dryly, that the spinster 'Ice Queen' of the Centre would follow in her family's lethal footsteps.   
  
Miss Parker heard the knock at her front door as if from a great distance. A tiny portion of her consciousness remembered belatedly that she hadn't locked the door when she'd arrived home that evening for some reason, and she hoped that whoever it was would just go away when nobody answered. After all, it wouldn't be all that long and there wouldn't be anybody there in truth. The gun lay heavily in her lap, awaiting the stroke of midnight. On the table, Catherine and "Daddy" watched calmly from within their respective frames as if waiting for her to join them at long last. It wouldn't be long now and she would join them.  
  
She heard the knock again, louder and a little more insistent. She sighed and shook her head; whoever it was must be crazy or desperate to be knocking on anybody's door at this late hour. She stared hypnotized into the flames of what was left of the fire she had built to warm herself, deliberately withdrawing her consciousness from attending to anything but the contemplation of the final moments of the year - and last few minutes of her life.   
  
Then there was movement in the room; someone had entered her home without her permission. With an uncharacteristic lack of urgency born of believing she had nothing left to lose, Miss Parker looked up to watch Sydney approach her, an alarmed expression growing in his eyes as he caught sight of the gun nestled in her lap. He seated himself on the edge of the coffee table directly in front of her without a word of either recrimination or distress, snow still clinging to the shoulders of his overcoat.   
  
She didn't want him here. Not now. "Go home, Syd." The dismissal was curt, final.  
  
"Parker." The accented voice was soft, as if unsure of the wisdom of speaking at all. "What's this?"  
  
Her eyes flicked up to meet his tiredly, then returned to their study of the dying flames. "None of your concern, Freud."  
  
"On the contrary, this is very much my concern." Sydney shook his head as he observed her with growing alarm.   
  
He'd seen the small signs of emotional distress in her at work earlier in the day, but it hadn't seemed anything that she hadn't weathered before. She'd been in much worse shape after Thomas' death; he honestly hadn't expected things to have gotten this bad this quickly. He felt a surge of gratitude for Angelo and his empathic sensitivity to Miss Parker's welfare. Without Angelo's explosive tantrum of worry and panic for her to egg him on, he would never have thought to come here this evening.   
  
"What do you think this will accomplish?" He nodded at the gun in her lap.  
  
Miss Parker merely shrugged without looking at him again. "Nothing," she said in a voice devoid of expression. "Everything."  
  
"You don't want to do this..."  
  
The grey eyes that leapt up to meet his snapped angrily. "Don't tell me what I want or don't want to do, Sydney. You don't know what I want or don't want."  
  
"You're right, I'm sorry," he capitulated gently. "I don't know those things and shouldn't have presumed." Mollified, she resumed her study of the flames. "Can you tell me what you DO want then?" he asked in a tone that he hoped was inviting enough to get a response.  
  
"I want to be left alone," she answered in the flat voice that worried him so badly. "I want you to go away and leave me be... I need to finish things."  
  
"I can't do that, Parker, and you know I can't."  
  
"Sure you can," she assured him dryly. "You've never..." She fell silent.  
  
"Parker," she heard him call to her gently again. "Tell me what's wrong. What have I never done?"  
  
She stared into the flames for a long time, not wanting to give voice to her pain in the little time she had left. She wanted to remain numb. His questions kept calling her back into a place where the comfortable numbness faded away to leave her swimming in the aching emptiness of dead loved ones.  
  
"Parker, talk to me," Sydney called again, this time reaching out a hand and brushing her cheek with the backs of his fingers to get her attention. She flinched away from his gentle touch and still refused to look at him.  
  
"Go away, Sydney," she snapped at him tiredly. "Go home. Better still, leave Blue Cove forever. You have a family - go be with Michelle and your son and make a life for yourself far from the Centre and its intrigues. Forget you ever knew me." Miss Parker's voice cracked on the last few words.  
  
"Impossible, Parker. I couldn't just forget you." Sydney deliberately dropped his hand to her knee to give her physical contact with another living being, but didn't attempt to reach for the gun which was now lightly clasped in her hand. "You've been a part of my life for a very long time, since you were a little girl. I can't just walk away and leave you like this..."  
  
"I don't know why not you can't, when everybody else has..." Her voice had sunk to a nearly imperceptible whisper.  
  
"I'm not everybody else," he reminded her gently, dipping his head to catch her eye. "Mr. Parker may have ordered me to stay away and sent you away to school to keep you away, and Mr. Raines may have threatened to have me removed as Jarod's trainer if I didn't stay out of your life. But I never did more than just step back a bit."  
  
"But you did step back," she whispered disconsolately, glancing up at him accusingly but unable to hold his gaze for long.  
  
Sydney shook his head with a deep breath, unwilling at this very fragile time to point out that, over the years, it was she herself who had taken great pains to deliberately put and keep the distance between herself and everyone around her.   
  
He decided to take a different tack.   
  
"Have you stopped to think of all the people you would hurt by doing this?"  
  
"Nobody cares." Her voice was flat again, and she had resumed staring into the fire.  
  
"Indeed? What about Debbie?" That brought the grey eyes up to his again, this time in shock. "Ah. You hadn't thought about what your death would do to that little girl, had you? I didn't think so..." Hard as it was, as much as he would have preferred to comfort her, he steeled his voice into a penetrating sternness capable of breaking through the hold her depression had on her. "Her mother loved gambling more than she did Debbie and so left her motherless, and now you go and kill yourself and leave her truly deprived of any adult female role model. You know what it feels like when someone you love and idolize kills themselves - is that what you want Debbie to go through too?"  
  
His point had obviously registered, because a solitary tear began a slow journey down her cheek. But Sydney knew he had to press the point home even further, lest she find any excuse at all to climb back into this black pit of despair again at some later date. "And although you may laugh at this, Broots would be crushed. He may never be able to tell you, but you've become like a strong older sister to him. He's seen you with Debbie, and cherishes you both as a friend and coworker, but mostly as someone who loves his little girl almost as much as he does. He bends over backwards to do everything you ask him, even though you intimidate the hell out of him, have you noticed? Do you really want to hurt him this way?"  
  
The other cheek was wet now, but Sydney knew he couldn't stop yet - her survival might depend on him pressing his advantage to the max while he had it. If she had felt alone in the world, and if it was that loneliness driving her to the brink of self-destruction, then she had to be convinced otherwise - shown beyond a doubt that she was surrounded by those who cared.   
  
"What about Jarod?" Again he got the shocked look, which he in irony returned in full measure. "What? You think he wouldn't be devastated by your loss? You've been a big part of his life - easily as big a part of his life as your father was of yours. You know how attached he is to the concept of family - how he's helped you discover the truth about yours. Do you hate him so much that you'd stab him like this?"  
  
"Sydney, stop..."  
  
"Then there's Angelo - who has been beside himself and tearing the Sim Lab into little tiny pieces since just after you left for the day. Have you ever noticed how protective he is of you AND Jarod? You know we don't really understand what goes on in that mind of his - do you want him to have to deal with feeling you die, or do you truly not care what happens to him?"   
  
Miss Parker gasped as the accusation hit home, hearing her own hard voice calling him "Cousin It", or worse - not once, but many times...   
  
"And last but not least, there's me," he sighed, once more catching her complete attention. He nodded at her surprised gaze. "That's right, me. I'm an old man, Parker - old enough to have cared for you more than you'll ever know ever since you were too young to remember. If you truly intend to do this thing, then know that you'll have to do it while I sit here and watch - and know that you would be sentencing me to live the rest of my life with this as my final memory of you. Are you sure that's what you want?"   
  
For the first time that evening, he saw genuine hesitation in her gaze; and finally, almost in relief, he dropped the stern tone and let his heart and sorrow into his voice, his eyes filled with frantic worry and desperation. "Yes, I admit I may have stepped back all those years ago, but... My God, Parker! That doesn't mean I ever walked away from you completely. I've been right there next to you for years, and I'm here now, aren't I? Does all that count for nothing to you then?"   
  
Miss Parker stared at her old friend, stunned by what had just been poured into her ear and by the sight of a tear unashamedly spilling over onto his chiseled cheek. Unnerved, she found herself moved to stare back down thoughtfully into the fire again. Only now, her mind spun with the idea that she might just have been very wrong. If so, then she couldn't help being aghast at the idea of what she had been on the verge of doing to herself and others, all based upon a critical and massive error in thinking. Debbie. Broots. Jarod. Angelo. Sydney. Why had she never even thought of them before this?  
  
Wordlessly, Sydney lifted the hand resting on her knee and stretched it out, holding it palm-up to receive the weapon. He knew she had seen his gesture, seen her gaze flick up to watch the movement, so he held still and waited patiently while she processed everything he'd just dumped on her. Nothing he had said was less than the truth, but everything he had told her had been a truth she had been blind to or carefully avoided seeing for a very long time.   
  
The silence stretched between them, with Sydney respecting her need to think through a completely new perspective without feeling pushed or the need for defensiveness. He'd just thrown verbal ice-water in her face; and he could only hope that his arguments had been convincing enough because he really didn't want to have to try to wrestle the gun away from her after all. He honestly doubted he had either the strength or the dexterity to do it without getting one or the other or both of them hurt or killed in the struggle.  
  
Finally, slowly, Miss Parker lifted the gun from her lap and put it in his outstretched hand, then slumped as if the act had taken all the support from her world. It had. An overwhelming numbness had returned the moment the gun left her hand, but it wasn't the same kind of numbness that had been driving her toward self-destruction any longer. It was a numbness that came because she couldn't find it within to rally the energy she'd need to invest her consciousness back into the world of the living. And so she sat limp and depleted, suspended emotionally between living and dying and moving in neither direction.  
  
Still without uttering a word, Sydney expertly removed the clip from the gun and ejected the chambered bullet and then set both weapon and ammunition behind him on the coffee table, out of sight. He next took a very careful and appraising look at her face, and then came to a decision. "Parker," he said very gently, dipping his head to catch her eye again, "c'mon. Let's get your coat - you're coming home with me. I think you've had enough celebrating alone for this holiday season, and for a long time to come as well."   
  
While there was surprise in her gaze as she raised it to meet his yet once again, this time it was filtered through an incredible expression of exhausted incomprehension. "Sydney, no. I'm... You don't need to... I don't want to impose..."  
  
He shook his leonine head at her. "Parker, stop. No, its not an imposition; yes, I really do need to; and frankly, you might as well do as I ask because I'm not going to take no for an answer. I... You..." For a moment, words failed him. He took a deep and uncharacteristically unsteady breath. "Look, humor me, OK? I came way too close to losing you just now..." Sydney's voice grated with the burden of an emotion too strong to remain unexpressed if he didn't shut up soon. He swallowed hard, his mind reeling away from consideration of what might have happened had he not shown up when he did.  
  
"I didn't know..." Miss Parker's voice shook in sincere regret, and this time it was she who reached out to him.   
  
"You knew, Parker - you just didn't stop to think." Sydney scolded gently as he captured her wandering hand between both of his, then shook it for emphasis. "Just... promise me one thing - promise me you'll never, EVER, scare me like that again!"  
  
Huge, grey eyes gazed tiredly into frantic chestnut ones, and she nodded her agreement and then slowly began to lean forward toward him. Instinctively, Sydney leaned forward toward her in return so that his shoulder was in the right place for her to lean against, then put a gentle arm around her and held her close. He closed his eyes and breathed a huge sigh of relief. "Oh, thank God!" he whispered as he felt her nestle down and relax against him with a sigh. He wrapped his other arm around her protectively to hold her closer still.  
  
Miss Parker closed her eyes and let the warmth of a friendly shoulder and embrace soak into her soul despite the chill of now-melted snow against her cheek. She still might not have any blood-relation family to speak of, but suddenly the vacuum left by her father's suicide plunge was not quite so crippling when viewed from the security of Sydney's shoulder. She knew she'd continue to grieve the loss of the man she'd loved as a father her whole life, just as she still grieved the loss of her mother and Thomas, but she also knew now that she had the resources to survive that grief.   
  
No matter how badly she had treated him over the years, Sydney's silent support was one of only a very few constants of her existence. Its never-failing presence had long both comforted and frustrated her. At long last she realized that he was once more standing openly ready to begin filling the gap left by her most recent loss, just as he had done for her several times already. He'd been hiding right under her very nose all this time, as had several others equally willing to assist her - others whom she had conveniently forgotten in her despair.   
  
Earning Sydney's approval and respect could prove an interesting challenge, as would trying to remember to treat Broots better and spending more quality time with Debbie. Maybe she could even find time for Angelo. As for Jarod, well...  
  
"Life goes on," - wasn't that what her father had said once so long ago?   
  
Indeed. With help from her friends filling the gaps, not only would Life go on, but so would she.   
  
Feedback, please. mbumpus_99@hotmail.com 


End file.
